Why Capitalism Requires Christianity (or Something Like It)

Martin Luther

When I entered the job market thirty years ago, my parents gave me advice which I’ve attempted to live by since then: don’t, they said, apply for the manager’s job first. Nobody starts at the top of the ladder. Take time, pay your dues, and the organization will recognize your contributions and reward you appropriately. I believed them then and, despite thirty years’ evidence that it doesn’t work that way, I still heed that warning.

Recently, reading religious history, I encountered important parallels with contemporary economics. The medieval Roman church insisted that salvation was very catechistic: that is, one achieved salvation through right thinking, which one could achieve through study. Salvation was a classroom exercise. The two great Northern European reformers, Luther and Calvin, disagreed. They saw salvation as a matter of right faith, which one achieved only directly from God. Their salvation, though more scripturally sound, was much lonelier.

Smarter scholars than me, particularly Max Weber, tie the Protestant Reformation, and resulting Catholic Counter-Reformation, to nascent capitalism. Just as salvation became a purely private matter, Weber writes, so did disposition of money, land, and other formerly shared resources. The checklist to salvation, like the checklist to prosperity, became arcane and murky, hidden to the masses, visible only to those able to see truth. We hope to go to heaven, without knowing what heaven is.

In capitalism, we who internalized the economic precepts young, can cite the cardinal virtues: hard work, loyalty, perseverance, self-sacrifice. These, we’re told, are keys to worldly success. Yet though I’ve long internalized these ethics, I need only witness the world around me to see that isn’t true. Our economy rewards financiers, actuaries, and attorneys, while chronically underpaying nurses, teachers, and construction workers. I know this, because I have eyes; yet I can’t shake internalized belief.

We’ve learned, from infancy, that hard work produces reward. And this isn’t entirely wrong, as hard work is necessary to reward; workshy layabouts will spend their inheritance quickly and finish with nothing. But hard work isn’t sufficient for reward; in British economist George Monbiot’s much-cited words, “If hard work were all it took to get rich, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.” So clearly, success in capitalism requires hard work plus something else.

Exactly what that missing ingredient is, causes much controversy. When somebody comes from nowhere (or nominally nowhere) to achieve runaway success, Jeff Bezos say, friends and foes alike will scrutinize his history for causes of success. Bezos’ supporters will assert that he created a platform marketplace, fine-tuned it for customer needs, and outperformed his competition. His critics will cite that he came from wealth, his parents loaned him seed money, and he underpays his workers.

John Calvin

For ecclesiastical purposes, however, exact one-for-one explanations don’t matter. John Calvin noted that not everyone who believes right and does right will necessarily reach Heaven when they die. Some people will just succeed, for reasons known only to God; Calvin called these people “the Elect.” We cannot know, throughout this life, whether we’re among the elect. One day we’ll simply open our spiritual eyes and either see God, or not, and that’s all that matters.

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and other massively successful capitalists didn’t achieve capitalist salvation because of their earthly merits; they were simply among the Elect. Why did Facebook flourish and MySpace founder? Why did VHS beat Betamax? And why do some hard workers become managers and entrepreneurs, and others die in the salt mines? Scholars retroactively construct deterministic explanations, but fundamentally, the reasons don’t matter. The capitalist god, which is the Market, simply chooses the Elect.

Recently, over dinner, my parents turned to me and, with tones of disbelief, commented that the idea of merit-based pay raises and promotions seems like an ideal of the past. Why, they said, it’s almost like hard work doesn’t produce worldly reward! I swallowed my initial “told-ya-so” response and talked them through their reasoning. Briefly, they finally realized, in their seventies, that hardworking people of good character were making others rich, and gleaning no reward.

But that’s exactly what capitalism requires. The system cannot work if people don’t believe they might get to Heaven. Like Calvinists, we simply accept that we cannot see the evidence of reward during this life, because this life is sinful. We’ll know our efforts have been rewarded after the rewards arrive: after wealth, honor, and responsibility accrue upon us. And if they don’t, well, that’s how we’ll know that we were never among the Elect.